the Greenberg adaptation transformed the original "flawed book" by enriching the dialogue and sharpening the characters of not only Joey but the women in his life, like the damaged society wife Vera Simpson... and the wronged chanteuse Gladys Bumps.... In other words, there would be a stronger story that might match the well-known songs. According to New York, Greenberg ... simplified the story and removed much of the old script's gangster gothic.... He made it smarter and sexier, and bleak. Where the movie ended with Novak and Sinatra walking off into the California sunshine, this ends with Joey alone on a dark street corner, wondering—like so many right now — what the hell to do." Variety wrote: The Rodgers and Hart songs...are certainly easy on the ear, but what makes the Roundabout revival of their 1940 show so compelling is Richard Greenberg's trenchant adaptation of the original book by John O'Hara. Erasing the sanitizing stamp of musical-theater coyness, Greenberg brings a fascinating melancholy grubbiness to this cynical story of sordid emotional transactions and opportunistic behavior in late-1930s Chicago. It's a dark show for desperate times...The major discovery is [Martha] Plimpton's heretofore-hidden musicality ... even half-talking her songs, [Stockard Channing] puts across the rueful resignation of "What Is a Man?" with elegance... and pours enough bruising self-deprecation into "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered" to make it work. The New York Post ("a flawed revival") gave the production 2½ stars. The Associated Press wrote: Richard Greenberg ... has given John O'Hara's original book ... a new sheen without changing the general outline of the story: punkish song-and-dance man scores big, gets his comeuppance but soldiers on. Greenberg's rewrite is crisp and to the point. There is a hard-boiled briskness to his work, a film-noir sensibility in its punchy dialogue that ricochets lickety-split across the stage. Channing gets across this number ["Bewitched"], one of the most famous in the Rodgers and Hart canon, in what can be described as her best Rex Harrison My Fair Lady manner. It's half-sung, half-spoken but acted to the fullest, a consummate bit of musical-theater performing.... Plimpton is quite a revelation in the role. Variety, praising the production and specifically Risch, wrote a follow up response to the mixed reviews stating it's bizarre to see Mantello's staging pejoratively described as "ruthless", "joyless" and "unhappy"—as if such qualities don't compute in musical theater. One of the controversies of this "Joey"